


Being Dead Has Its Perks (Too Bad I'm Not)

by Vonnix



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Beetlejuice Needs a Hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:02:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24828022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vonnix/pseuds/Vonnix
Summary: Beetlejuice is in trouble.The last people he ever expects to help him out come to his rescue.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64





	Being Dead Has Its Perks (Too Bad I'm Not)

**Author's Note:**

> This is an idea I had a while back and had to explore.
> 
> Can't make any promises towards how close together updates will be but I'll do my best to make them not too far apart.
> 
> Thanks for your support, and I hope you enjoy!

Beetlejuice struggles.

Chains encircle his body and keep him from moving, keep him kneeling in place where he's been imprisoned. Manacles grip into his wrists and further keep him in place. A bit in his mouth keeps him from speaking, keeps him from making noises louder than a grunt.

He doesn't know how long he's been there. He'd gotten a week of running around the Neitherworld without having to worry about his mother before she'd returned, more angry with him than she had been in a millenia and a half. It's been considerably longer than a week.

At least he thinks so.

There's no windows so there's no way for him to know for sure.

Juno walks a loop around him, scowling.

“Have you learned your lesson yet?” She asks, running a finger that looks deceivingly frail over his skull. “Are you ready to _obey_ your mother and do what I say yet?”

Beetlejuice nods his head immediately. He'll play ball, he'll get free, and the second her back is turned he'll escape.

Juno's smile is a mockery of fondness. She moves closer, runs a hand over his cheek. Strokes her knuckles lovingly across the side of his head. Without meaning to Beetlejuice lets his eyes fall closed, the sensation of a caring touch from his mother a longed-for one he craves so much.

He enjoys it right up until she grabs a handful of his hair and rips his head harshly to one side, pulling him down in a painful position that he wouldn't be able to keep if it wasn't for the chains holding him in place.

“This _stupid hair_ will always be your undoing!” She screeches in his ear. “How many times have I _told you_ to learn to _control it?!_ ”

Not for the first time he wishes he'd ever figured out how to do just that. He's tried. Oh how he's tried to learn how to keep his hair from leeching off his emotions to reveal them to anyone who's looking at him. In the millenia that he's been dead he's yet to figure out how to though.

“Seeing as how you _apparently_ haven't learned your lesson yet you'll just have to stay here until you _do!_ ” Juno yells at Beetlejuice. She releases the tight hold she has on his hair to instead slap his face hard enough to send him reeling. While he's still trying to shake the stars away from his eyes she stalks away. Disappears in a flash of smoke that he's never managed to get to work himself.

Only once his mother's gone does Beetlejuice manage to open his eyes without feeling like he's going to throw up.

He's going to have to be careful, he thinks while looking once more around the prison he's been thrown in. The sound of liquid seeps up through the cracks in the floor accompanied by unending and incredible heat strong enough that even the dead can feel it.

The incorruptible and unforgiving magma that wraps around the edges of the Neitherworld, separating it from Hades, bubbles up into the chamber. In through one crack and back down into another.

Yeah. He'll need to be  _really_ careful.

:::::::::::::::

The zoo isn't a place that Lydia would ever say she's had a good time.

It's too bright. It's too crowded. It smells.

But her biology teacher is also the teacher in charge of the school newspaper and has promised Lydia extra credit points for every good picture she takes of the class trip.

So Lydia's found herself at the zoo with the rest of her biology class.

Bored.

At least some of the animals are cool.

She takes particular glee out of taking the best picture she can out of the big snakes while they're being fed. The biggest has a plaque in front of its cage explaining that it was discovered abandoned in a house by realtors and has been named Lenore. Lydia gets to the cage, as big as her room at home, just as a rat as big as the ones in New York gets dropped in from above.

Lydia looks down at her camera after hitting the button on her camera to check the series of pictures that have just been taken.

One of Lenore hustling forward to where the rats stunned body has landed.

Another of Lenore mid-strike, wrapping herself around the rat's squirming body.

The third -

The third looks like the giant snake has three heads.

Lydia scans through the last two (Lenore having freshly swallowed the rat and slithering off into the underbrush of her cage, to sleep is Lydia's best guess) and then back through the first two. Nothing out of the ordinary. Lenore looks like a regular snake.

It's only in the third photo that the snake looks like it has three heads. Weird.

The first thought that enters Lydia's mind is that maybe Lenore moved at the last minute and the two extra heads are just an accident. There's ways to do that with pictures, Lydia's done it herself a few times for fun. Fake ghost pictures are all over the internet – made using just such a technique.

But Lydia's second thought is of the events of a year and a half past. Of when she and her father and stepmother all moved to Connecticut.

It would be weird for the demon and who claimed her as a best friend to spend his time cooped up in a zoo tank ... but assuming people could see him he  _would_ be getting all kinds of attention. He does love attention.

Lydia taps on the glass of the tank gently. Lightly enough to get the attention of any listening demon but not hurt any poor animals ears.

“Beej?” She softly calls out once she's sure no one around her is close enough to overhear.

Suddenly the snake, Lenore, is rearing up from the ground directly in front of Lydia, staring at her through the glass. Slowly, ever so slowly after its eyes dart from one side to another behind Lydia, the snake shakes its head. It  _shakes its head_ .

“But you know him?” Lydia asks, “Where is he? Is he okay?”

The snake doesn't shake its head again. Instead it opens its mouth wide as if testing itself to see if she'll fit and hisses at her. The hiss is quiet and deep and Lydia can hear two words in the undertone of it.

“Prison,” Lenore has hissed at Lydia. “Juno,” The snake snaps its mouth shut and shuffles off back into its cage to digest its meal.

Lydia stands and stares for a long moment before darting off with a mind full of thoughts. She barely remembers to take more pictures of other animal exhibits for her teacher. So many in cages that she doubts are really big enough for them.

Maybe she'll start a petition?

But that can come later. Right now she's got to find out what the snake was talking about. Juno? Prison? Juno's dead. Properly dead. Beetlejuice killed her with a snake as big as a house. And prisons  _exist_ in the Neitherworld? What would you need to do to that's so bad that the dead need to lock you away?

As soon as Lydia gets home after school she runs to her room to drop her backpack and camera onto her bed before running back downstairs into the basement. Her darkroom is down here, not the biggest but not the smallest. She goes to the room right next to it. It's the biggest one in the basement and Dad and Delia have been making plans to turn it into a rec room – they just haven't acted on them yet.

So it's just a big, empty room.

Lydia doesn't know how much time she has before Dad gets home from work. Or Delia gets home from wherever she's gone for the day. Or the Maitlands come out of the attic to see how school was. Any of them will stop her from what she's about to do and all of them have perfectly justifiable reasons to do so, Lydia acknowledges.

None of them spent as much time with Beetlejuice as she did as though.

He was gross, sure. He was dangerous, definitely. He also had a wicked sense of  humour that never failed to make her laugh and he saved her life twice. He'd given her a glimmer of hope when she was at her lowest, when she'd been about to kill herself. Then he'd saved her – and everyone else too – again when he stopped his mother from killing them all.

So she owes him this much at least.

Lydia glances at the door nervously, listening for anyone calling her name, then turns back to the empty expanse of room in front of her.

“Beetlejuice,”

The lights flicker dramatically.

“Beetlejuice,”

The air around her stills, expectant.

“Beetlejuice!”

The room rumbles around her and flashes warmer, hotter,  _too warm_ and there's a scream of pained misery for a moment before stopping.

Nothing else happens. The room returns to it's original state.

Beetlejuice doesn't appear.

“Lydia?!” Adam calls from deeper inside the house but it's Barbara that appears first, her ghostly feet silent on the stairs as she runs down them as fast as she can.

“What was that? Are you okay?!” Barbara runs her hands over Lydia's face, her arms, checking worriedly that she's okay.

“Yeah, I'm fine!” Lydia nods just as Adam runs down into the basement as well. “But I think Beej is in trouble!”

“Lydia why on earth would you be worried about that _monster_?” Barbara gasps, face a perfect map of parental disappointed worry. The expression worms a brief feeling of happy warmth in Lydia's chest.

“Because he's my _friend_.” Lydia insists, returning to the worry. “I tried to summon him and it seemed like something was trying to come through but _couldn't_. Here, watch!”

Lydia turns away from where Adam is telling her not to, from where Barbara is agreeing with her husband in that whatever's going on with Beetlejuice he should be left wherever he is.

“Beetlejuice,”

Once again the lights of the room flicker.

“Beetlejuice,”

The still air hangs heavily in the room.

“Beetlejuice!”

The room shakes. The floor beneath Lydia starts to crumble and crack and behind her the Maitlands cry out in surprised fear. A form mists into view in the center of the room on its knees and only barely visible. Heavy chains wrap around the figures body and prevent it from moving completely and a wordless call of pain echoes around the room, booming louder than the small room should allow.

“Beej!” Lydia yells at the sight of her friend. He's facing away from her and shifts as if to look for her but can't, the chains keeping him still.

The room rumbles and the floor keeps buckling and Beetlejuice's trapped form starts to waver back out of view. Pulling him back to wherever he's being kept imprisoned.

Lydia tries to run forward to grab hold of him. To keep him from being made to leave – she needs to get those chains off him, she needs to save him like he did her. But she  _can't_ . The heat in the room feels like a sauna where she is and only gets exponentially worse the closer to Beetlejuice she tries to go.

It's Adam that runs past her and grabs hold of the demon.

As soon as Adam's hands touch Beetlejuice's shoulders it feels like a rubber band snaps. The room returns to it's pristine state. Lydia and Barbara stand just inside the doorway. Adam stands in the middle of the room.

Beetlejuice kneels, still wrapped in chains, on the floor next to Adam.

“Help me get these off him!” Adam calls out just as Beetlejuice starts falling sideways to the floor. Adam just barely keeps Beetlejuice from collapsing completely, the chains limp now instead of winding off to tether to points unknown.

Lydia runs forward immediately and starts tugging on the chains trapping her unconscious friend but nothing she does can manage to budge them. She pulls at them in every direction she can think of, Adam right beside her and trying his hardest to help. All the while Beetlejuice only stays upright because of their constant hands on his body keeping him from completely keeling over onto the floor.

But the chains stay in place.

“Try these!” Barbara says as she runs up with bolt cutters in her hands.

“Great idea, honey!” Adam grins as Lydia grabs at the offered tool. They look old and rarely used but when put up against one of the chains trapping Beetlejuice the bolt cutters win.

Adam and Barbara take up places on either side of Beetlejuice while Lydia snaps all the chains on him one at a time, the ghosts holding the rescued demon up. With each snapped bit of metal it seems to get easier to do and it's not very long at all before Beetlejuice is completely free. Arms hanging limp at his side. Eyes barely even slits they've closed so far.

“Beej?” Lydia takes her friends face in her hands and it's only now that she's so close and the chains are gone that she sees the burns on his face with matching ones on his hands. Are there more hidden by his clothes?

Where did Juno  _have_ him?

She's going to  _kill_ Beetlejuice's mother and this time it's going to  _stick_ .

“Ly.... Lyds?” Beetlejuice's voice sounds even more rough than the last time Lydia had seen him. Like someone had ripped out his throat and replaced it with an old cigarette factory machine that hadn't been oiled in a decade.

“Beej are you okay?” Lydia goes to touch him, to prove to herself that he's really here. Also to ground him to the fact that he's not wherever she pulled him away from.

“Never been better,” Beetlejuice replies with what she suspects is supposed to be the wide grin she saw so often throughout the days they'd spent alone in the house. Wide and manically gleeful and filled with nefarious mischief while somehow showing off every single one of his very sharp teeth.

Instead the grin is a mere shadow of its former self. It's barely there before it's falling off Beetlejuice's face again to the pained and exhausted one that he's had since they got the chains off him.

“Now listen here,” Barbara scowls at the demon between herself and her husband. Lydia recognizes the expression – it's the one that the ghost puts on when she's trying to show disappointment in whomever she's talking to while not looking angry. Stern but caring. “You are very obviously _not okay_ so tell us what's wrong so we can help you!”

“Yeah!” Adam nods. “Now fess up!

Beetlejuice is silent for a while. The Maitlands both scowl at him from their positions on either side of him literally holding him up. Lydia stares worriedly at him, her hands reaching out to touch but stopping just shy of doing so. It takes him so long to answer that for a moment Lydia starts to think that he's fallen unconscious.

But then he answers.

“Nothing any of you guys can help me with,” Beetlejuice finally sighs. Gently pulls his arm away from Barbara to gingerly rub his eyes.

Lydia doesn't miss the blink-and-you-miss-it wince that very quickly gets hidden. She doesn't know if Adam and Barbara do or not, she resolves to ask them later once Beetlejuice isn't right with them.

“We beat you,” Lydia points out. “Whatever trouble you're in we'll deal with that too and then you can start paying us back for all the trouble you caused.”

Beetlejuice looks like he's going to refuse. To argue but one look at the faces of the three people who rescued him lets him know not to bother. He starts laughing, a dry and awful sound that quickly turns into a cough that sounds even worse.

When the coughing finally stops and his body is no longer being wracked with the spasms caused by them he loses the fight he's been keeping up for ... he's lost track of how long. Too long. He feels Adam and Barbara's hands tighten their grips on his arms but the sensation makes a flood of warmth fill his body.

Because he's safe. Finally. For now he's safe and he can trust these people who rescued him to not have the stomach to do anything to him while he's unconscious.

The last thing he's aware of before finally letting his body shut down to rest is Lydia trying to get his attention.


End file.
